I watched her as she screamed at her mother. She hated when her mother treated her like she was stupid, whenever she saw her in a bad light, whenever Holly wasn't the perfect daughter. It made her homocidal, ready to kill her mother. I watched her plot it out, plot out how she would do it. A knife was always her choice of weapon, but I think she wanted to use her hands instead. That was something I found we had in common, using our hands to kill, or in my case, tentacles.
Her mother left, and she picked up a new journal. Fresh paper for her to let out her anger on. I perched on her headboard and watched as she drew what I could only guess depicted her stabbing her mother. Her eyes were black, and her mother was crying. Leave it to Holly to draw something so gruesome in chibi form. It seemed typical. Then she drew Taylor in the background, watching her, cheering her on. From what I could gather, Taylor was a halutination Holly saw when she got angry. It resembled me; tall, black, a shadow. But it had red eyes, but black on paper, because Holly prefered graphite to color. Another similarity between us.
I followed Holly as she picked up some things and stuffed them in a purse. A recorder, her notebook, a pencil, and her cell phone were all she brought. So she wasn't running away, not yet. Just running far enough to get away from her family. Probably the woods, or close by.
She passed her mother without looking at her. I followed her down the street, past some annoying kids on bikes, past the pool which was closed for the fall, to some brush behind the pool's fence. There she sat, and drew Taylor's face again. When she was like this, she wrote her words backwards. You could only distinguish them in a mirror. Strange, but I wasn't bothered. Holly texted her boyfriend, who I saw pull up. For her sake, I didn't kill him. She was very level-headed, and I didn't think she would be possesable to me if I did. She wouldn't be controlled like Tim.
Her boyfriend arrived. He stood there, lost for a moment, and then sat beside her. Comforted her. I was mildly surprised that he wasn't afraid of her, what with her threatening to kill and run away. He was remarkably okay with her and her condition. Like Johnny and River in "To The Moon", only Holly wasn't as calm as River. She was much more violent and angry and depressed.
She threw her phone and notebook in frustration, not anger. Frustration with her insistant mother, who wouldn't stop calling her. Holly wanted to calm down, which surprised me at first. She was aware of her anger? Wanted it to stop? It was like looking at two different people in one physical body. One that was rational, and one that was not. Which one would take over ultimately, I wasn't sure.
Holly sobbed into her boyfriend's shoulder. After a while, he cheered her back up. They went to sit in his car, and she spent the rest of her day with him. Like Johnny and River, willing to cope because of true attraction.
Too soon he left, and Holly was again left alone with her family. She ignored them all, most likely still contemplating her dislike of them. She ate her dinner, and went to her room. Her mother came up to say goodnight, but Holly was a drone. She didn't care. Her mother didn't realize, and probably assumed yet again that Holly forgave her, which was far from true.
I let her sit for a while, play her silly computer games and watch her stupid videos. A character called Pewdiepie seemed to have taken her interest. At eleven, I appeared in the corner. She didn't see me at first, but I knew right when she did. Her breathing increased, and she didn't look directly at me. Using her peripherals, she stared in horror. Maybe she thought I'd go away. But I was going no where. Finally, she looked at me, defiantly.
"Taylor, go away."
Taylor? Perhaps she didn't see my blank face. I shook my pale head.
"Taylor, really, I'm done with your shit. You almost made me kill her today. Stop intruding."
Again, I shook my head. Soon it would click with her that I was no fragment of her damaged mind. I was the Slenderman. And she was in my clutches. A few more minutes, a few more attempts to make "Taylor" disappear. Then it clicked, as Pewdiepie screamed, and the static sounded, and my digital face, or lack of it, appeared on the screen.
Holly stared, full on at me, in horror, a fear so fresh and raw that I relished in it for a moment. But while I was busy enjoying my ability to induce the most powerful fear into my victims, her stare turned from scared to furious.
"Slenderman, I am not afraid of you. You can kill me, you can hurt me, but you cannot scare me. You're nothing compared to Taylor, just a jump-scare next to a free-fall into a pit of spikes and lava. Don't think I didn't see you earlier, in the woods, watching me, waiting for me to look at you, wanting me to scream and run only so you could follow by teleporting or whatever it is that you do to move. So just what is it that you want? Why'd you stick around? Why not kill me when I was alone?"
I was stunned. She had the nerve to talk to me like a lesser being? Maybe I would kill her then, instead of possession. Just as my anger reached the boiling point, and my tentacles emerged, she put up her hands.
"Wait. I'm sorry. That was uncalled for. I was just mad from the day; not mad at you. I don't really know how you work, but if you want, you're welcome to sit here on the bed with me, and relax a bit before you kill me."
What a confusing, infuriating tone she talked to me in. As much as I would have thrilled in tearing her apart, my curiosity in this small being got the best of me. She patted the bed next to her, and even offered a pillow. Slowly, I inched toward her, and finally took a seat. She smiled warmly, and tilted her laptop screen in my direction.
"Look, it's you, see?" she said, pointing to a cartoon image of me. Funny, how many people looked up to me in a way, when all I would do was kill them in return. How sad it must be, to be a human, and so ignorant, and arrogant in believing that I wouldn't harm them when I got the chance.
After a few minutes, I did reconsider. Holly would not die. She would help me to kill others by possession. But I didn't decide this based on her mental ability, or disability, whichever. No, I decided it on the curiosity factor. This girl intrigued me, and I wasn't ready to get rid of her yet.